Indiana Gov. Daniels: Debt Puts Country on Path 'to National Ruin'

Just doing the math proves that America’s spiraling national debt adds up to one thing — disaster, says Republican Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. The country is on a road “to national ruin,” he warns.

Daniels offered that blunt assessment during a conference that the No Labels group hosted on Tuesday, reports CNSNews.com. The group includes Republicans, Democrats, and independents “dedicated to making government work again.”

“Whether one believes in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the large amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Daniels said. “There’s no other outcome arithmetically possible.”

Daniels said he encourages people to “put the ideological debate off [to] tomorrow. You know, for today, can we agree that the math here does not work?”

U.S. Treasury reports for last month put the national debt at almost $15.5 trillion, about$130 billion up on January’s total, according to CNSNews.

The country could go past the point of no return, “in which we are so indebted and so bankrupt that the mortgage payments eats all the dollars we need to put people to work,” Daniels said. Budget cuts or tax hikes were not the answer: What is needed is a private economy that grows more quickly, and meaningful entitlement reforms, he said.

Congress had become dysfunctional in handling the country’s financial woes — and at “a lousy time,” Daniels said, when the United States never had to deal with “a non-military danger or threat as large as the one we face today.”